


But somehow through the storm I couldn't get to you

by toughluckbuddy



Series: Strangeness & Charm [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Bittersweet, F/M, Uchiha Obito Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-07 02:51:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19075987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toughluckbuddy/pseuds/toughluckbuddy
Summary: The bond between soulmates manifests differently for everyone.





	But somehow through the storm I couldn't get to you

**Author's Note:**

> For the rarepair bingo prompts: first meeting/last meeting - Obito - fate/soulmates
> 
> Title from St Jude by Florence & the Machine

The bond between soulmates manifests differently for everyone. On their first day at the Academy, Genma and Ibiki had gleefully ran to embrace one another, screaming and laughing, and Genma later told his fascinated classmates that it was like a giant invisible hook pulling them together by their navels.

Obito just felt a pinprick of something on the back of his neck. By the time he scratched it away, he had already met Rin, who had the prettiest smile in the whole world, and when he glanced distractedly in Kurenai’s direction, a few rows down, she was not looking at him anymore with a vaguely puzzled expression, but rather giggling at the first of the many jokes Asuma would end up telling her.

Then they grow up a little and they’re not friends, barely acquaintances who exchange three words each year. Somebody asks them once if they’re siblings, at some tournament for their whole promotion, and Obito finds himself uncharacteristically annoyed by the remark, something heavy in his stomach rebelling against the idea, and through the rest of the day he can hear her say “No, but people often think I’m an Uchiha” over and over again, though she only says it once.

He can honestly say he never thinks about her again after that, busy with Rin and Kakashi and Minato and his sharingan that won’t manifest. He’s too used to longing for things he can’t have to even notice she’s one of them.

He dreams about Kurenai three times while he’s working for Madara. (He dreams about Kakashi a hundred times, about Rin twice as much, but he never dreams about Gai, never dreams about Genma or Ebisu, and somehow that means something)

The first dream is a random day of training at the Academy, a memory really, throwing shurikens and practicing taijutsu on his own, except that his body is all wrong somehow, and when he goes to the bathroom to splash some water on his face, he looks in the mirror and it’s not himself he sees but her, her red eyes and her long hair.

The second dream barely is one, just sounds and sensations, her giggle from that first day and “No, but people often think I’m an Uchiha”. That’s all he has – after all, they never knew each other.

The third dream wakes him up with tears streaming down his face and a painful emptiness in his chest, lost and panicky like he forgot something important. They’re eating dinner in a warmly-lit kitchen and Kurenai says “I think Hinata has a crush on one of your students,” and he says “All the girls have a crush on Sasuke,” and she laughs a little and says “No, I’m talking about Naruto!” and he makes a sound of surprise and amusement.

(There’s a fourth dream were he kills Asuma with his bare hands, violent and satisfying and unexpected. He doesn’t think that one is about her, but he’s wrong.)

Then he doesn’t dream anymore, barely sleeps, tries not to think, everything to keep him from looking into the deep void inside of himself, to silence the voice who whispers to him that he’s wrong, mistaken about everything since the very beginning, and then there’s Kakashi, so different, and Rin, thankfully the very same and then… well, he dies.

Except he doesn’t.

He wakes up feeling like shit, feeling like himself for the first time in years, and in the very back of his mind there’s a sound like a very faint giggle, an echo of a dream he had a long time ago. There’s someone beside him, and he doesn’t understand why he’s disappointed to find it’s Kakashi.

Nothing happens for a while. He’s back in Konoha, and he feels sad and lonely, like he’s a kid again. He gets drinks with Genma and Ibiki, and it’s awkward and a little strained, but also kind of nice, and he remembers the thing about the hook in their navels that pulled them together, how that had made him laugh and a little wistful, how long he had hoped that Rin would wake up one day and run towards him with that same expression of pure joy and of absolute certitude.

When he sees Kurenai again, or rather, when he _sees_ Kurenai, really sees her for the first time, she’s scratching at the back of her neck and she’s looking at him from across the street some random day seven months after the end of the war, and it’s not pure joy, but it is absolute certitude.

It should feel huge to realize that his soulmate was in the same classroom as he was twenty-five years ago, that he could have ran towards her – or rather, he would have approached her warily, blushing and stammering, afraid to be wrong about them, and she would have nodded and smiled in that calm way of hers, the one he would have admired and relied on while they would have learned to be shinobis together, never feeling alone again, until they were both eating dinner in that warmly-lit kitchen from his dream, peaceful and happy.

It should feel terrifying and life-changing but instead it just feels as if some annoying noise in the background he had never even noticed he had been hearing for his whole life had just… stopped. Kurenai looks away and he can see she’s crying, bending down towards her baby to hide her face from him.

He thinks about Asuma and he watches her walking away without saying anything. He thinks about Rin and he wants to cry too. He goes home. (Is that why she’s his soulmate? Because they spend their lives walking away from each other?)

He comes back an hour later, in the same street, and she’s already there again. (She’s his soulmate because they were always going to get there in the end.) She’s not crying anymore but she looks sad, and hopeful and embarrassed.

There’s a lot of things they’ll never get to have – getting relentlessly laughed at because he wouldn’t have wanted to let go of her hand during practice, her being all quiet and serious in public but ranting at him behind closed doors about kunoichi training, both of them insecure about their abilities but always sure of each other. What they will have though: Obito holding Mirai for the first time as if she’s the most precious thing on the planet (holding her like that all the following times as well), Kurenai kissing his scarred cheek in front of everyone with a serene smile, long talks about Asuma and about Rin that will make them laugh and cry, but never self-conscious.

They’re both still in love with dead people but, well.

“Hi,” says Obito.

“Hello,” says Kurenai.

There’s that pinprick on the back of their necks.


End file.
